Ben Nelson

For any of these candidates to be successful, some redrawing of the political map will be necessary.

From Oklahoma on up to the Dakotas, Republicans have won every Senate race since 2013 when the Tea Party took out Nebraska's Ben Nelson.

Today, the region is represented by only a single Democrat in the House of Representatives, Cherise Davids of Kansas, from the highly educated, affluent Kansas City suburbs.

Even Omaha, Nebraska, one of the region's largest cities, is represented by a Republican.

We wouldn't have gotten...

I bet we could've gotten, though, with a president who went to them and said, "Hey, Ben Nelson, I won District 2 in Nebraska.

You're gonna fucking vote to clo- for cloture.

Hey, Dick Lugar in Indiana, I'm more popular than you are.

And from our view, our state would benefit greatly by having more political competition.

Well, I talked to Lynn Walls yesterday before the president's speech, and I made the observation, tell me if this makes any sense, that this gubernatorial race reminds me a lot of 1986, and was it 86? Kay Orr and Ben Nelson.

You know, Kay Orr was elected, and Ben Nelson was an unknown insurance executive from Omaha.

And, you know, the sitting Republican governor was in trouble.

Does this race remind you of all of that? Because I know you remember it as I do.

My home state of Nebraska, very reliable Republican state, uh, federally.

Uh, i- it's also a state that brought up former US senators Bob Kerrey and Ben Nelson.

But it's been a, a very ruby red Republican state for a, a very long time.

Uh, and it is an interesting race in the sense that you have this Republican incumbent, Senator Pete Ricketts, uh, the former governor of Nebraska, a- and running against Dan Osborne, an independent candidate who ran against Republican senator, also of Nebraska, Deb Fischer, uh, in 2024 and lost by just seven points, uh, which, you know, doesn't sound really amazing in a lot of different states, but an independent candidate getting that close to an incumbent senator made headlines.

Right

... uh, and Governor Ben Nelson.

In South Dakota-

Right

We had well over 50 Democratic senators who were for it.

We had two in particular, Joe Lieberman from Connecticut and Ben Nelson from Nebraska, but they were not the only two.

They were just the two who were outspoken, who said, "If this bill contains a public option, we're voting no." And so we could see how regardless of where you come from, including up to Barack Obama, uh, he said, "You know, if we were designing the system all over again, we would start with a single payer." Um, but the times did not permit that level of commitment.

It wasn't there from the public.